No wonder, without continuing development.


Ah, now i get it.
But no, there is no special genuine or slang word for those things.

We call forerunners or trailblazers like this "Wegbereiter", but this word can be applied to a lot of things, cars e.g., the Audi Quattro was a "Wegbereiter".
"Weg" means "way" and "Bereiter" in this sense/translation can roughly be translated as the first who were where no one was before; like a pioneer, but a bit different, a bit better, or say: in a more abstract way in the sense that a pioneer or scout just finds a way and reports about it, while a "Wegbereiter" furthermore is a source of inspiration (Jeez, i´m struggling with words...).
But you can also use this word for non-tech related things like music, e.g. Black Sabbath, Judas Priest and Motörhead were the forerunners/Wegbereiter for the NWOBHM.

HTH.

Can someone tell me how to post pictures from the web here?

Use image tags:
{img}http://webaddress.com/filename.jpg{/img}

Of course change the brackets to the solid instead of the squiggly ones I used. Hope that helps.

OK, let's see if this works.
The world's real greatest aircraft

Thank you Halftea

It was my pleasure.

sooo pretty sooo shiney!!

...sooo ... clumsy? scnr.


You want an elegant seaplane?


.



(P*ssing contests r us... )

No, no, you misunderstand, that isn't a seaplane, it's a firetruck that someone duct-taped some wings to .

I believe you are all mistaken about the world's most magnificent aircraft. Northrop's Tacit Blue is nothing short of amazing...

BEHOLD A STEALTH FLYING PLATYPUS DEFYING THE LAWS OF NATURE AND ALL THAT IS HOLY!



A

I remember seeing this in person... it's one of the ugliest things I have ever seen. I know a guy who worked on the B2 and the sight of this thing just sickens him/

I have never seen anything so scifi looking airship!

Visitors Shuttle!!!

Even 25 years later the theme to the miniseries still gives me chills.

Two bathtubs glued together.
Elegance, ... well, is different, so:

Now again for our popular category "P*ssing contests ´r us":

MBB Lampyridae



http://www.rp-one.net/lampyridae/lampy.html
http://www.hitechweb.genezis.eu/stealth4e.htm




http://home.xmsnet.nl/hdejong/curious/Lampyridae.htm

Lower RCS than F-117.
Capable of Mach-speeds (est. 1,6) and supercruise.

Project was sadly cancelled by force due to pressure "from above", which led to the resignation of several high-profile engineers.

I'm Dutch speaking, so often German terms are pretty obvious to me ("Wegbereiter" is an example). "Ersatz" OTOH, doesn't have a near-identical comparison in Dutch.

OTOH?

you all obviously need some schooling in real all school awesome jet fighters



the Supermarine Swift

Wegbereiter is more of a trailblazer than anything else. But yeah I've never heard of a similar word in german either. A piece of technology that stays on the peak only for a short time.

You know, kinda sad I can't anything to this pissing contest. The only thing we have good is artillery these days and even though we had a "good" airforce and tank army prior to ww2 the whole thing got eaten up by our german neighbors and given the deathknell by soviet centralisation.

I guess these birds used to be decent


I believe they were able to go outmaneuver bf109s in some areas.

Why would you say that, were you attacked by a feral bathtub as a child or something ? If I didn't know better, this would make me think you were French :p !


At any rate, I'm afraid that I've got all of you beat. THIS is the perfect aircraft:

Actually I have heard something else.
Pro: It fly high and is almost invisible for radar.
Con: Terrible to fly, terrible to maintain, can't be used in bad weather and it has pricetag of 1 and 1/2 of spaceshuttle. Also, if radar receivers use noise triangulating (principle used in WWII when the radars didn't have power to emit signals), it should glow more than typical nonstealth aircraft.

did you also know they leak on the ground? the design tolerances were made so that all the pieces would only fit together when at running temperature, otherwise they wouldn't be able to get it to fly properly

Yeah, I heard about leakage on this craft.

"Quick! Give us permission for lift-off! Fuel pressure is down by 3 percent already!!!"

I always found the Sukhoi 35 the most beautiful of current jet fighters.

Yep, and it plays it´s role perfectly. KISS-principle.



Hello neighbour!


Really? You mean as a loanword, or is there no dutch word for "alternate"?





Stupid question: Is there an english word for exactly this?



Lemme guess: Czech?
If yes, then 1.) Hello neighbour!
and 2.) Where´s the problem? You have a very good reputation at engineering, for ages. You were the only country to re-engineer the ME-262 (Avia S-92), fly and maintain.
Also your locomotive-industry is very impressing - e.g. Skoda built some of the most elegant steam locomotives ever.
Not that bad for such a small country.


Zuzana Howitzer? Then it´s Slovakia. Not a direct neighbour - Hello anyway!


That´s easy, 109ers weren´t good at turns.




Yess. One of my alltime favourites!

on the SR-71, why bother with being stealthy that was them just testing stuff for defense? just fly faster than the missiles they shoot at you and higher then the guns reach...

but to add a few more to the list of awesome planes.



the X-36, sadly no full size was ever done, but it's gorgeous.



boeing bird of prey, also pretty awesome to look at.

do not know about flight characteristics but the look nice, best plane though, A-10 hands down.

Yeah I'm a czechie. And to be honest - I've got no problems with germans. Apart from the traditional our beer is better than yours pissing contest . They're just sometimes far too sticklers to precision Learned it the hard way from some of my teachers.

As to the arty I believe it's shared by both us and slovakia. At least the original systems. Not sure if they modernised theirs in any way. I know we did modernise our DANA's to some extent.

Initial versions were... troublesome in certain circumstances. You see, you occasionally had an engine flame-out, so you had to perform a specific procedure to get it restarted. After a while, they added some electronics to do that automagically, at which point it wasn't a problem anymore.

So in essence, no, the SR-71 apparently wasn't so bad to fly. The U-2 on the other hand... satellites are good !

Maintenance from what I understand mostly came down to the fact that it used titanium. Good luck doing much better with the SR-71's requirements.

The bad weather thing was apparently related to old electronics that got replaced partway through.

The pricetag was mostly related to fuel costs (the crews weren't worried about the fuel catching on fire when it leaked, because that took LOTS of effort), though I'm certain that tricking the Russians about what that titanium was getting used for wasn't easy. In order to get the plane operational they had to use very unusual (a.k.a. expensive) fuel. I understand that to be what killed the plane (three times, as I best recall!).

As for radar, it could be worse: at one point they were apparently testing a fuel additive that made the exhaust into a massive radar return.